Thursday, October 26, 2017

Thoughts About the Baby: Birth

I'm not going to do a full-on birth story here because that's just not my thing, but I did want to jot down a bit of a story so I could look back on it later.

First things first, though. I know what you're really here for. Meet our little Ronan, the cutest baby I ever did see. Doesn't he have a good face? I'm probably biased...

Onto the story! It begins a little randomly, with a little bit of explanation. Adam owns a Trans Am, and my beautiful baby is a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Both of these have very limited back seat room, so our transportation was kind of a problem. We'd been searching for cars for a while, but finally got to the point where we had to choose. Like now. So among all the other chaos that was our lives last week, we went car shopping. It was stressful and dumb and we have a beautiful new-to-us SUV but I'd rather never go to a big car dealer again, thank you very much.

Anyways, I think Ronan knew that was the last piece of the puzzle, though, because after I went in for my appointment Thursday (where I had scheduled to be induced the next Monday) I started feeling uncomfortable. I figured it was just from checking my cervix, which had left me feeling pretty ug before, and moved on. My mom and I walked around the stores a bit and then went home, where Adam and I made some spicy chilly and went to bed.

I blame the chili.

So the uncomfortableness never really left. At 1:00 am I figured I just had to poop. By 5:00 I was googling "what do contractions feel like" because I had always been told that they'd hurt my back and kind of travel from out to in, and these just felt like stupid bad cramps. By 7:00 Adam had basically become the only logical one (I was still in denial) and had started prompting me to get ready. By 8:00 I couldn't stand, and by 9:30 we were in the car. I white knuckled the whole hour we were driving to the hospital.

When we actually got there everyone was super sweet and so supportive and I'm guessing I was making some pretty intense "I'm in pain!" faces because they all were very supportive and kind. I got into my hospital room at around 11:00 and got an epidural which, for me, worked instantly and was very lovely, lasting right up until about the time I needed to push. Labor went well, and Ronan was born at 5:30 pm. 8 pounds, 11.5 ounces (yeah, ouch). 20 3/4 inches. Breathing, crying, perfect.

We decided to stay in the hospital for the whole next day and night and get discharged on Sunday morning. But when Sunday rolled around, the doctor came in and told us that Ronan hadn't pooped yet. At all. She explained that this could be caused by many things, some serious, some not so serious, and that they would like to put him in the nursery to be monitored overnight. At this point Ronan had only left our side for a few check-ups, and he had never been gone for more than an hour. I had had very little sleep. They were telling me they were going to take away my baby. So I totally cried. A lot.

The next few days were incredibly stressful. The issue with Ronan was probably just blockage, but he was going to have to go through some tests to make sure. For me, it was just 2 days and nights of shifting between my room for a half hour of fitful sleep then back to the nursery to nurse. Exhausting, both mentally and physically.

Eventually, they did a test that helped clear out the blockage, and everything in his little body went back to normal. Amazingly, he honestly didn't really act that unhappy when he was all blocked up. It was like his stomach was a black hole. It was so weird. All of the nurses were instantly enamored with him, and they all helped us through this whole ordeal so well. I honestly don't know what I would have done without them. Probably just straight up went crazy.

We finally got to take Ronan home on Tuesday. The car ride home was peaceful, and the adjustment to being home with a newborn, while still stressful, was nothing compared to those worried filled hours in the hospital.

Now we are two and half weeks in, and everything has calmed down a bit. We are still figuring a lot of things out, but I already couldn't imagine life without him in it.